Sales are an integral part of most businesses. The sales period, the time during which a sales representative is trying to sell a product or service to a customer, may last anywhere from a couple of minutes to several months depending, at least in part, on the complexity of the product to be sold, wherein more complex and/or more expensive products may have longer sales periods.
During the course of the sales period, the customer or client to whom the product is being offered or sold may have questions about the product, wherein complex products and/or longer sales periods may result in more customer inquiries being raised. The customer may then submit these questions or inquiries to the sales representative, or team of sales representatives, trying to sell the product to the customer. It may then be the responsibility of the sales representative(s) to respond to the customer inquiries in order to increase the chance of success of selling the product to the customer.
Managing the customer inquiries, however, may be a necessary but time-consuming task for the sales representative who is interested in succeeding, or at least increasing a chance of succeeding, in finalizing the sales opportunity. For example, it may be difficult for the sales representative to track the inquiries with respect to the product, or to know a relative priority level or other status of the inquiries with respect to each other (e.g., whether a customer inquiry has been resolved or otherwise responded to). It also may be difficult for the sales representative to determine what, if any, sales activity was performed in response to each inquiry, and whether the customer was satisfied with the response.